


if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Domestic, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Mack makes a cameo but wants nothing to do with their mess, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Romance, Sappy, Unresolved Sexual Tension, skoulsonfest2k16redux, they're both so lonely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 11:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7531840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson's domestic fantasies get the better of him.</p><p>Written for the Skoulson RomFest 2k16 Redux - prompt: "Come home safe"</p>
            </blockquote>





	if I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more

Later she rationalizes that it happens because they are so comfortable around each other.

“I think you’re looking for these,” Coulson calls, holding up her gauntlets, who had disappeared behind the couch.

She takes them, rolling her eyes and thanking him wordlessly. Their Hub is a mess after six months of living in it and offering refuge to Inhumans and their families. She likes it, it feels lived in, but… it’s a mess, there’s no denying it. And they can’t afford anything bigger or cleaner or with more crew.

“You’re on comms today?” she asks.

“We’ve got three missions on the air, and Mike is in Atlanta, ready when you are. So. You’re going to need me on comms today.”

“I always need you,” Daisy tells him amicably as she puts down her cup of coffee, their morning chat always a little too short. Coulson grabs it and puts it away on the counter, to wash it later. And yeah, she needs him, not just as an agent, because he’s pretty much the perfect housewife around here - except he’s playing wife to like thirty people.

She prefers the days when he goes out on the field with her, and today is not one of those. She can’t hide the anxiety it gives her, and she doesn’t particularly want to. Coulson gives her a sympathetic look. He probably also wants to go out there with her and Mack, but he can do more good in here, coordinating the teams.

“Time to go,” Mack warns her from the door.

Coulson looks at her the way he always does before a mission, the way Daisy has come to expect, and it gives her comfort.

She’s always apprehensive about leaving the Hub - their little center of Inhuman community they have carved out for themselves - like deep down she suspect it will be taken away from her somehow.

She pats Coulson on the arm.

“We’ll be back tonight,” she says.

“Come home safe,” Coulson replies, a line she’s heard often enough, and then he does something he’s never done before.

He snakes one arm around her back and pulls her closer, gently, and kisses her on the mouth. Just a little peck, so casually, with such baffling familiarity, as if this was something they did _everyday_ , as if this was their millionth kiss, not the first.

It’s like he realizes right in that moment - he looks like he has just woken up somewhere strange. He gives her a horrified look.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…”

He stops, looking as shocked Daisy feels.

She staggers backwards, walking out of the room before he can say anything else.

She has a mission (or three) to attend to.

 

+

 

She moves out of the Hub in a daze, focusing on the security measures.

She’s worried about Coulson, more than bothered.

She tries not thinking about it, about anything really, as they carry the weapons to the Quinjet. Mack is a trooper, it’s only when they are already on the air and Daisy is on the stick that he starts making faces at her.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asks.

Daisy has her gaze very intently focused on the control panel.

“Nope.”

She needs to keep her head in the game and what Coulson did… it’s the Most Distracting thing she could think of.

“Good,” Mack says, letting out an audible sigh of relief. “Because I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Good, we’re on the same page.” Good, good, she thinks. That’s done. Then unable to stop herself. “It was probably just a joke, anyway.”

A stupid, cruel joke.

She knows Coulson would never do that to her, but right now it’s the safest explanation.

She tries to think on the motives, not the kiss itself. Like, sure, being kissed first thing in the morning is nice, she’s only human (well…) but that’s not even the point here. 

“I don’t think Coulson would make such a joke,” Mack argues.

“Well, you said you didn’t want to talk about it so… Is this what you did with Bobbi and Hunter?”

Her partner smirks.

“Believe me you don’t want to compare your prospective romance to Bobbi and Hunter.”

Daisy looks away, feeling… _caught_.

“It’s not a prospective romance,” she corrects him. It’s Coulson, _don’t be ridiculous_. “It’s not… anything. Let’s concentrate on the mission.”

“Your call, boss,” Mack says, kindly, fondly.

 

+

 

It’s not like they haven’t talked - he was on comms with her the whole day, after all, and he warned them in time so they could avoid going head to head with the local police - but that was different, it was the mission. Coming back home and finding him in the living room area, clearly waiting for her, is different.

“Hey,” he says, and he sounds like he has been fidgeting all day, thinking what to say to her.

Daisy makes a rash decisions, thinking it might help.

She walks straight up to him - he’s leaning with the back of his legs pressed against the couch - and grabs his shoulder and pulls him so that their mouths touch for a moment, trying to imitate the feeling - thoughtless, domestic, sweet - of the kiss he gave her this morning..

“I’m home,” she says, whispering against his lips.

Coulson freezes, his eyes studying her with worry like she has gone crazy.

“Now that’s out of the way…” she says, pulling away and walking to sit on the couch.

He stares at her, confused. Well, he looks less confused than she felt this morning anyway. She gestures for him to join her on the couch and he does, looking a bit stunned.

“What happened?” she asks.

He sits on the edge of the couch, gathering his thoughts before talking. He looks like a kid called to the principal’s office.

“I’m sorry,” he replies, which is not a reply at all. “I wanted to apologize before, but you were on a mission, I didn’t want to distract you.”

She nods.

It’s a good thing that she didn’t blew the mission on a tiny kiss.

“But why did you do it?” she asks again.

She knows it’s not a matter of whether Coulson has any romantic feelings for her. The thing is that she knows him well enough to realize that if he had that sort of feelings he wouldn’t let her know in such a casual way, he would have never just kissed her like that. Something is going on.

He must have been really out of it, because Coulson is so careful with boundaries, he would never do anything like that without her permission first. (Would have she given it, if he had asked? That’s a more complicated question and maybe one that has no relevance here at all)

“Phil?”

She never uses his first name unless they are alone, and lately only when they are close and she’s teasing him. She tries to get him to relax, to see she’s not hurt or angry at him.

Coulson looks around.

“What you have built here… it’s amazing,” he says, giving her an admiring smile.

His words make warmth spread through her.

She loves this place, the messiness of it. She loves coming back from a mission and seeing the little things Coulson wants to do for others - like how her mug is washed already and he’s prepared a fresh pot of coffee. Even with the weirdness between them because of this morning he hasn’t stopped doing that.

“And I love being part of this, being useful,” he says.

Daisy reaches out and brushes her fingers across his left hand. She is still not sure how much he feels with his prosthetic but she makes it a point to touch him as often as she thinks he’s comfortable with.

“You’re more than that. You’re essential.”

He gives her a slight nod and goes on, and Daisy takes away her hand. “I like that. Even though it’s not comfortable living outside the law, I like what we have here, this hub, this little team of ours.”

“That’s why you kissed me?”

“I did that because I got… content. I love helping out here, I love cooking for the team, but I especially love cooking for you when you come back from a mission and are tired and you need comfort food. I like how you always thank me. And we’ve been close… without levels, and without official ranks, we’ve been…”

“Friends?”

“Yeah.”

Daisy gets what he means, and she has been enjoying it too. She barely has time to breathe, having to protect all those Inhumans in hiding from both the government who wants to tag them and even “re-educate” some of them, and the pseudo-fascist hate groups just trying to get rid of them, but Coulson’s presence here, in the Hub, helping her whether it’s as an agent in missions or just taking care of the hurt and lonely people that come through these doors, well, it lightens the load. And Coulson always finds a way to get her to unwind. Lately that has included a lot of late night conversations and a lot of comfort food.

“I’m just hearing good things,” she tells him.

“Exactly,” Coulson says. “I got confused. This is a fantasy I have had for many years, since I was a teenager. Doing good, taking care of people, waiting at the end of the day for someone, feeding them. Telling someone to come home safe. When I joined SHIELD I taught myself to give up on those dreams. But life here in the Hub, and this morning... I got mixed up.”

He runs one hand through his hair. He looks mixed up.

She narrows her eyes at him.

“We live in a dunk underground bunker and the pipes are leaking every other day. Everyone is trying to kill us and you? You can’t even go out because your name is on a really bad list of traitors against the country. And you’re telling me this looks like a domestic fantasy to you?”

Coulson looks almost bashful.

“Well, yeah.”

She gets it, though. In her own way she’s been doing the same. Her team is small and the failures comes as often as victories. But it’s her team and her family and she wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

And her and Coulson have been living under the same roof for six months now, he’s as close to her as anyone has ever been - in any capacity, and Daisy finds it hard to believe how lonely she has felt with lovers compared to how complete just having coffee every morning with Coulson. Maybe in that way she has taken him for granted, thinking he didn’t need anyone else. He must have been lonely all this time. 

Suddenly his gesture this morning feels sad to her. she’s probably just a pale substitute for the real thing, but down here… she understands how he could get confused.

“But it’s just that? It has nothing to do with me? I’m just decoration to your fantasy? Or… a stand-in for someone else you’d really like to do this stuff with?”

Coulson looks at her with a gaze Daisy can only classify as benevolent. He reaches out, touching his thumb across her cheek.

“Sometimes I wish you could see yourself as other see you,” he tells her. “As I see you. So you wouldn’t ask if you were a stand-in for someone else.”

His voice is so calm, as if he has suddenly forgotten about himself, his longing. He’s so focused on her. Daisy feels a tightness in her chest, not unlike what she felt the first time she controlled her powers, when she moved a mountain and her mother’s presence tempered her excitement with a deep calm.

Daisy doesn’t know what to say.

She had thought Coulson’s kiss was a problem to fix, something they had to figured out until they could turn back the clock so it never happened. She doesn’t want to turn back the clock. She doesn’t want to go back to the world-before-the-kiss so to speak. She wants to live on this version of reality, this _right now_.

But she hesitates or waits too long or doesn’t really know what to do now (what do you do when you discover that the most important person in your life is even more important than you suspected? she feels like she should have read more novels about this stuff, she should have fallen in love more often instead of settling for anyone who wanted her, she should have listened to the lyrics of popular songs). And Coulson starts retreating, understandably.

“But I’m sorry. I never meant to make you uncomfortable,” he tells her.

Daisy looks around. Her gaze once more falls on the cup Coulson washed and now is drying on the sink.

It’s not just _his_ domestic fantasy.

“Coulson, I’m an orphan. Do you think I don’t have those fantasies as well? Of coming home _to someone_? Someone who loves me.”

“Well, you already have that,” Coulson tells her, simply. And though she kind of knew it still feels incredible to hear the words. “The question is… that someone? It’s just a _someone_... or you want someone in particular?”

She smiles softly, hesitant about how she has to do this, but feeling safer with Coulson here to navigate it with her.

“I have my preferences…” she says, leaning over and pressing a light kiss against Coulson’s lips.

“Good, good,” he mutters.

She rearranges herself on the couch, pressing her palm against his chest and bringing their mouths together properly. They spend some minutes doing just that, kissing. Properly. Coulson keeps his hands at his sides, like he’s afraid of going further and Daisy is in no rush to do that - funny, she’s always in a rush. Maybe if she loved Coulson less she would be able to move things along faster, instead of taking the scenic route. The scenic route is worth it.

When she pulls back Coulson looks amazing, but not in shock like this morning and he finally dares to touch her.

He strokes her hair for a moment, eyes looking lost like stroking her hair is the most pleasurable thing he’s done in years.

“You must be hungry after the mission,” he tells her. “Let me prepare you something.”

She chuckles. Phil, the fantasist. 

She has no trouble indulging him on this. She is hungry and tired and ready to try letting him take care of her for good.

“Yes,” she says. “You’ll enjoy that.”

“I will,” he says, getting up to begin cooking.

He thinks better of it for a moment and turns around, bending over to kiss her again - to leave a tiny peck on her lips, casually, like they do this _every day_ , like it’s their millionth kiss and not their fourth.


End file.
